Voter impersonation hogwash

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The Republican push to put ever higher ID hurdles in the way of people voting — particularly people from population segments not friendly to Republican candidates — is built on the fiction of a need to combat voter fraud. There's scant evidence of voter fraud and now comes new reporting on the emptiness of one of the very few cases ever cited by the Republican anti-vote crowd.

Vote fraud is to be distinguished from people turning in phony voter registration cards in voter drives. Fraud comes only when people obtain false registration AND vote falsely. Doesn't happen. Voter suppression through scurrilous caging and other means? That happens a lot. Ask U.S. Rep. Tim Griffin, an expert in the field.

Also, there are no doubt criminal election officials in some places. Our cover story next week, from Tom Glaze's memoir, will richly recount bipartisan election fraud in a rural Arkansas county that persisted into the 1970s. A voter ID program wouldn't have done a thing about that.